History Maker: I Am Legend, by Scipio

You have a chance in this generation to become a history maker.  Are you going to step up to the plate?

I was drafted during the Vietnam War. Current events maybe being drafting you into the cultural battle at hand today.  But first, it requires you to be there. You may not to want to go, but you have to decide because you live in this time. You have three choices: 1) go to today’s version of 1960’s Canada, physically and/or mentally, and escape like so many draft dodgers did during Vietnam, 2) you can “drop out and love in” like the middle-class “fortunate sons” did whose daddy’s connections kept them out of the war, or 3) you can just go.

I can tell you I would not have gone of my own free will.  I saw the carnage and lies about Vietnam, and I didn’t want to go.  But of the three choices above, there was only one choice for me, number three. I served on the DMZ (forgotten war) during Vietnam protecting South Korea from the North during the most dangerous time in Korean history since the Korean War. Was I a hero? No. But I was there.  That’s’ all you need to be – there.  I was one of only a few thousand who have the honor to have become an Imjin Scout.  On three separate occasions since that time, I have by chance met three elderly Koreans.  Each time when I told them I was on the DMZ and the date, they immediately bowed deeply in gratitude. Why? Because I was there.  I got a different recognition and reception from my peers when I returned from my tour of duty however.

You have a choice in this generation to become legend. Are you going to step up to the plate?

You may never know the things you do today that will become legend. Here is an example. The army, in its infinite FUBAR, first trained me in air defense artillery on quad 50s (M55) and twin 40 mm (Dusters) antiaircraft crew weapons, and immediately after training retrained me in infantry. My air defense artillery training took place at Ft. Bliss, TX and our firing range was the White Plains desert of New Mexico. Final exam was to shoot at aerial targets, which were long “sleeves” of material like you see pulled behind planes at the beach that say things like, “Eat at Joes”. However, the “sleeves” we targeted were pulled behind the Army’s first generation of drones called ARCATS (Army Remote Controlled Ariel Targets).  We were told not to shoot at the drones, but the drones are exactly what we shot at!  We got away with it because it is hard to hit a target moving over 200 miles an hour when you have to use “tracer observation” to target it.  Unlike a rifle range, we had tracers’ going all over the sky distracting our aim.  I sometimes found myself asking “are those my tracers or the guy beside me” when they got up to higher elevations at seemingly slower speeds with your dept perception skewed.

When the Iraqi war broke out, I was watching CNN live when the famous skies of Bagdad (you can hear it on NCscout’s “Radio Contra” intro BTW) lit up during the first wave of “shock an awe”.  I jumped out of my seat because it looked eerily like some of my buddies shooting at our aerial targets in the desert. I told my wife, “They don’t know what they’re shooting at.  Look at those tracers going everywhere.”  I then realized it was stealth aircraft. They couldn’t “see” them and they were firing indiscriminately.  When you first start firing loud multiple automatic weapons you can be all over the place in target placement, and it was difficult for our NCOs to distinguish between “intent” and “inaccurate” targeting.  So, we all shot at the drones!  The record drones shot down “accidentally” by previous classes was three.  We went gunning (pardon the pun) for that record. That was October 1966.

Crew weapons qualification at Bliss was two days firing at the ARCATS, and ground targets made up of old PCs (personnel carriers), old WW II tanks, and 50-gallon metal barrels in the desert. Before the first day was over, we had shot down 4 ARCATS!  Lots of high fives going around among us with a lot of cussing and threats from the range officer in the control tower and our NCOs with our crew weapons.  The frustrated range officer finally said, “OK, you (expletives) want to shoot at my ARCATs, fine?  We have a prototype that goes 250 MPH and we are going to send it over range without a ‘sleeve’!  Go ahead try to shoot it down.  I dare you”.  I would like to point out that a “sleeve” created drag on the ARCAT and without a sleeve it would be more maneuverable and faster.  So here comes a “sleeveless” ARCAT that goes 50 mph faster, they know we will never hit it. It did a couple of loops de dos above us showing off, intimidating us. Nothing but glee coming from the range officer’s mike. The new advanced ARCAT made its first pass through the firing range. It climbed and dipped so fast, no one (eight units on line) even got a shot off!  The range officer was laughing in his microphone mocking us. I felt a little humbled.  The ARCAT turned for its second pass and we shot it down! The place went nuts, the range officer said something about God on his mike, and threw the drone remote control on the floor smashing it!

Fast forward to August 1992, 26 years later.  I was in the local laundromat washing clothes when I noticed a guy putting some fatigues with Ft Bliss air defense artillery patches into a dryer.  I asked him if he was a vet. He said no, but he was active-duty home on leave from Ft Bliss.  I told him I was trained at Ft Bliss on the quad 50s and dual 40mm and I imagined they probably had long since been retired. He became very attentive, and he said there was only one of those training units remaining at Bliss.  The Army wanted to keep a trained cadre if they needed to pull those old weapons out of mothballs, and he was currently one of the instructors.

I said, “When I was there in 1966, we set the record for shooting down ARCATS. We shot down five.  What is the record now?”  As in disbelief and eyes fully wide open he said, “Five? that’s still the record.” I said, “What!” He said, “You guys are legend.  Every class since then has been told about you”.  Frankly, I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t think what I did was legendary, I was just there. He said, “Wait till I get back to base and tell the guys I met one of ‘you guys’”! I said, “Yeah its hard telling how many we would have shot down, but after shooting down five the first day, we were only allowed to shoot ground targets the next day.” He said, “Wait, you did that in one day?” I said, “Yes.”  He said, “We never knew that.  We assumed it was over the normal two days.”  Then he put both hands on the sides of his head, turned in a full circle, took one step away, turned back and looked me in the eye, and said, “They are not going to believe this”.  He said, “You guys were greater than we thought!” The guy shook my hand and looked me in the eye as if I was some big movie star. I gulped.

I was humbled.  I wasn’t great. I was just there.  I could have chosen not to be there.

Now you have a choice.  You can definitely become a history maker. You can join the culture war for the very life of this nation and along the way you may become legend.